


I was born to die a monster

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Children, Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Family Dynamics, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 18:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21415057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Most days, Luther felt nothing but pain.It was familiar by now. Nothing but a steady ache that pounded in his bones, invisible scarring and the painful memory of a time long ago.Their father had been a monster obviously didn’t think that it was all that bad, being a disgusting, grotesque beast nobody could stand, but unfortunately, Luther quite didn't have the same thought as Reginald Hargreeves.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 112





	I was born to die a monster

**Author's Note:**

> OH BOY did this one get away from me. I was in the middle of writing this ages ago and I was originally going to call it 'familiar ache' but after not writing this for a couple of months the story kind of changed a little bit and I couldn't remember what it was supposed to be, so now it's this 😂 despite that, I like the way it turned out, even though it wasn't what I originally intended. I hope you enjoy it x

Most days, Luther felt nothing but pain.

It was familiar by now. Nothing but a steady ache that pounded in his bones, invisible scarring and the painful memory of a time long ago. But he was fine. He was Number One- he was fine, of course, he was.

Reginald- their father- had thought that his life was better worth living as a monster. Maybe because, now that Luther thought of it, their father was a monster himself and didn’t think that it was all that bad, being a disgusting, grotesque beast nobody could stand.

Sometimes, Luther forgot not to look shirtless in the mirror, and the vast expanse of coarse brown fur startled him. He still couldn’t believe that it was his body, the mangled mess of his, and it still stung to look at despite how long he had lived with it. His father had thought that he was helping him but really, all he had done was make Luther hate himself even more. He hadn’t thought that was ever possible.

Being on the moon gave him a slight moment of reprieve. Nobody could see him up there, and he was free to hide away without prying eyes. Up there, alone in the cold isolating vacuous void of space, nobody was around to witness any slip-ups. Nobody around to fully see what kind of hideous monster he had become.

Was this how Ben had felt all the time, with the writhing things inside him and hating his very being? Had he died with hatred in his heart and disgust in his soul? Luther knew he had.

When he got home, he hadn’t expected the teasing from his family, though he probably should have. It hurt a little- not the teasing and the comments about his size, he would have been fooling himself if he said that it wasn’t assumed, but what hurt was the fact that they didn’t even ask what had happened, didn’t even care, was what hurt. He hadn’t seen them in over 14 years- apparently, they hadn’t changed that much.

The doorways in his childhood home seemed too low- everything was too low. He found himself ducking instinctually after hitting his head a few times, and even then, sometimes he lost himself and forgot and just knocked things to the ground. His mirror was now a few feet too small, not that he’d know because he didn’t look in the mirror. Of course, he didn’t.

His clothes didn’t fit him; he’d discovered that right away. He was the first to arrive at the house, and between waiting for his siblings to arrive and Grace and Pogo to notice him, he went straight to his childhood bedroom, exactly as he’d left it and without a speck of dust, and tried on a few of his old clothes. Having to get undressed was a torment in itself, but he accomplished it, and somehow managed to rip and mangle every item of clothing he tried on beyond the point that Grace could repair them, so he kicked them under his bed to throw out later when he heard the front door open and the first of his siblings arrive.

He knew that his siblings meant well- they hadn’t seen him in many years, and he’d been on the moon for four of those, so they would have no idea how bad it was even if Reginald did tell them. Which he didn’t. But Klaus and Allison, they were all just surprised at how different he was. Sure, all of them had changed some way or another, but no one more so than Luther. Even Five when he came back, maybe he was a little more pessimistic and surly, but he was still the exact same Five as when he had left them all those years ago. He even looked exactly the same, so maybe that helped.

But Diego had always been a little more direct than his siblings, especially to Luther, but when he saw him for the first time after avoiding their childhood home for so long, his words stung, but not on purpose. And even when Hazel dropped that chandelier on him in the great hall and he was forced to take his jacket off or continue to endure the surface layer of glass the coat had protected him from digging deep into his skin, he hadn’t been nasty about it, just awed and confused.

Diego wasn’t the kind of man to stoop down low enough to result in using insults and names to hurt people. He had his knives and his fists for that; he didn’t need any sort of barbed words. The teasing he gave Luther was of the brotherly sort, and sure, sometimes there was heat behind his words, but he never said any of it to hurt Luther. Diego had more integrity than that, and also knew that Luther knew more dirt on him than Diego could ever dream of.

But sometimes it did hurt, almost as much as the memory of what he used to be and the scars he no longer had but could still feel like he got them yesterday. Sometimes, he could still see them under the dense brown fur that had taken over his body. And the scars he had gotten as trophies as a child when the Umbrella Academy was still in effect, still beating up bad guys and saving the world when they were their own little happy family, were _gone_.

The little mementos he had collected on his skin like freckles were all gone now, because while it wasn’t as if Reginald had taken his head off of his torso and reattached it to the body of a monkey, it had taken away every aspect that made Luther _Luther_, every little detail that he liked about his body from the scars to the tone of his skin to the way he could look in the mirror and liked what he saw- that hadn’t happened for a long time.

All his life, Luther had considered his father to be this legendary hero who could do no wrong, which might have been true in Luther’s case. Apparently, his father acted very differently towards Luther than he did to the rest of his siblings, and now that Luther knew about it, it made him sick to his stomach. He loved his sibling despite how often they grated on his nerves, and hearing about how Reginald favoured him over them... well. It was disgusting. He hated it.

And even if Reginald did love Luther more than the others, which Luther hated to even think about, he obviously didn’t love him enough to try a little harder to attempt to save him without mutating him so entirely. Instead, he took the easy way out and injected an incredibly experimental and untested serum into his only remaining child in an attempt to make him more useful.

So much for being ‘Number One’. Although, being Number One had an entirely different meaning now.

Now he understood why Diego was so bitter about it. It wasn’t that Luther was Number One and that Diego was always going to be second to him in more than just the number, and that it meant that while Reginald was busy treating Luther like a son, a super-powered son _sure_, his other siblings were pushed to the sidelines, forgotten and mistreated.

Now that he knew after so many years that his siblings were being treated as less than by their own father, it was no wonder they left when they did. Even if it meant leaving Luther alone with a robot, a monkey and a mad-man.

If Reginald had been willing to transform Luther so grotesquely, what had he done to the rest of his children?

There was a heavy knock on his door. When Luther spun around, he saw Diego leaning against the doorframe, watching him, a thoughtful look on his face. He was still wearing that _ridiculously_ _stupid_ leather get up that he always seemed to have on, and he was just _watching_ him. “Do you ever wear anything else?” Luther asked, awkwardly. “Leather can’t really be your favourite material.”

“It looks good on me, why not flaunt what I’ve got?” Diego responded as he wandered lazily into the room, and Luther, shirtless and sitting on the edge of his bed, nearly had a heart attack.

“What are you doing?” Luther stuttered, panicked, “I’m not dressed; you can’t come in here, _Diego_...”

Surprisingly, Diego’s only reaction was to roll his eyes. “Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’ve always known that you were a hairy fuck, nothing’s going to change just because you’re part monkey.” He didn’t give Luther a chance to defend himself because he meandered to the other side of the room and he perched in against Luther’s dresser. He looked him over. “If you’re worried about me saying something just because I’m seeing you shirtless for the first time, you’ve got the wrong brother. Five is downstairs raging about the constant lack of coffee.” Luther still didn’t look comfortable, but Diego ignored the horrified look on his face. “What were you thinking about? It didn’t look good- you looked like you were going to blow a blood vessel.”

Luther really didn’t like Diego being in his room, especially when he was sitting on his childhood bed in his childhood room without a shirt and looking like an absolute monster, but he believed him when he said that he wasn’t going to make fun of him for how he looked, so he was willing to indulge him a little. “Just... thinking about dad. That’s all.”

“Oh yeah, that bastard. What about him?” Diego asked, frowning. “I spend my days actively forgetting that he ever existed, but you seem to just like punishing yourself, huh?”

Biting his lip to hold back his laughter, Luther resisted the urge to hunch over and make himself smaller or to pull the sheets off the bed and wrap them around himself. But this was his brother. If he couldn’t be comfortable around Diego, then he might as well pack up and go back to the moon. “Just our childhood and how... differently he treated us.”

“In comparison to other children?” Diego’s eyebrows rose into his hairline, which Luther thought was hilarious. “Because I don’t know about you, but as far as I know we were the only children with superpowers.”

“No, I mean in comparison... to each other.” Luther didn’t even want to say it, and that thought was amplified by the way Diego stiffened and his features turned guarded. “I just... never knew. I was so mad at you all when you left, I sort of held on to that bitterness for a while. And even when I was on the moon, I only agreed to go because I was so sick of being alone and doing nothing, so I thought that if I was on the moon then I would be alone and doing _something_, you know? I didn’t know why you left. I couldn’t understand. I guess I should have asked, huh?”

Diego was so stiff that Luther thought that he looked like he’d been tasered. “What else did you expect? He was a piece of shit and his personality didn’t get any better the older he got. He treated everyone like they were nothing but scum on his boot. Even mum and Pogo.”

Before he could stop himself, Luther was surprised to realize that he was shaking his head. “Not to me,” he said quietly, and if it was possible, Diego retreated even further into himself. “He was... not the best, sure, a little distant and stern and everything else, but he treated me the closest to a son I think he ever has. We would always go for walks to his favourite tree in the garden and he had his moments where he would just pay _attention _when I always needed him to and I would enjoy every training session because in his eyes I could do no wrong and just... I thought he was treating us all like that. I didn’t know it was just me.”

“So that explains why you’re a stuck up prick most of the time,” Diego said. It was sharp but affectionate, and Luther knew that he was having a bit of trouble keeping his tough-guy shield up. “Because daddy treated you like his special little princess all your life. What made you change your opinion?”

“You probably wouldn’t understand,” Luther ran a heavy, hairy hand down his face. “But when he sent me to the moon, I felt so proud that he trusted me with a mission so important, and then I come home to celebrate his life at his funeral and discover that the only reason he sent me up there was to get rid of me. I sent him a package every day for four years and all he did was hide it away and never looked at it again, like Vanya’s book. I guess he wasn’t as great a man as I thought he was.”

The way Diego was looking at him, still tense but with something soft and unusual in his eyes, made Luther want to shrink away and hide. But with his bulk, he wouldn’t stand a chance against Diego’s eagle eye. “You and I both know that that isn’t all, is it? Come on Luther, I’m your _brother_, you can _tell_ me. I’m not going to hold it against you, or anything. I’ve got browner dirt for that.”

Luther knew that was true. He took a deep breath. He didn’t even want to look at Diego. “I guess that I was just thinking that if he could transform me into a giant hairy ape in a weak attempt to save my life just because he didn’t want to lose his final faithful soldier and then sent me to the moon for four fucking years for no reason, then I was wondering what the fuck he did to you guys to make you hate him so much. It’s obvious that you guys figured it out long before I did.”

It took him a moment, longer than he was willing to admit, but now Luther identified that look in Diego’s eyes- pity. And Luther hated it. “Well, I mean, you know what he did to Klaus and Vanya, right? Like, he locked Klaus in the mausoleum with violent ghosts for hours and made us all forget that Vanya was like us and then treated her like she was worthless all her life. That’s probably the reason Klaus got addicted to drugs and drinking and killing himself every night, to begin with. And we all know that’s why Vanya has no idea what to do with her powers, and why she let that asshole take advantage of her. Five left so he just hates him in general, and he treated me and Allison like prized pigs. And Ben... well. I thought it was obvious.”

“I remember when Klaus started taking the drugs,” Luther said absently. He wasn’t really listening to Diego, too busy getting lost in his own mind, and he was thankful for anything that lessened the embarrassment he was feeling. “I thought I was just imagining it. Thought he was just grieving Ben. But then he started acting weirder than normal and setting fire to things and he didn’t seem quite as afraid of the ghosts anymore, and I just thought he was going through a phase, you know, to try and not be so like the rest of us, and I let him, because I could sort of understand. But I caught him, once, with a handful of needles, and I nearly tossed him out the window. I came to you and Allison, and you laughed at me because you realized ages ago, and you were just going to let him kill himself. Do you remember that?”

He wasn’t really expecting an answer, but a guilty look crossed Diego’s face all the same. “What’s gotten into you?” He asked, startled. “One minute you’re embarrassed about looking like a monkey in front of me and then you tell me how you had a delusion that we were all treated the same and now you’re reminiscing about how fucked up our siblings are?”

“Has Allison ever gotten anything in her life through hard work and effort or has everything just been handed to her on a silver platter because she wanted it?” Luther continued. “Did you get into the academy because of your aim or because of raw skill? Would you still be running around in the dark in leather and a mask if you couldn’t kill people so easily? Would Five be a different person if he didn’t get stuck in the future for so long? Could we have helped Klaus? Could we have saved Ben? Would Vanya-”

He was interrupted by Diego moving from leaning against the dresser on the other side of the room to joining him on the bed, and he was so shocked that Diego would get so close to him while he was shirtless that he almost slipped right off the bed if it weren’t for Diego’s quick reflexes grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“_Diego_!” Luther hissed as he pushed Diego’s hand off of his shoulder and scooted as far away from him as he possibly could while still remaining on the small bed. “What- get _away_, the _fuck_-”

“Oh, chill the fuck out,” Diego snapped, but it wasn’t as heated as it usually was. “I already told you that I didn’t care what the fuck you look like and that I won’t make fun of you, so why are you freaking out? Relax already. You’ve got more on your mind than just worrying about how we were treated as kids- are you're going to tell me, or am I going to have to camp here for the night until you stop being so stubborn and just tell me? Because you know I will, and that I can be patient when I want to be.”

“I don’t like how close you are,” Luther said quietly, not meeting Diego’s intense gaze. “I’ve never... you’re just...”

Resiting the urge to sigh, Diego moved away until his back hit the headboard, but he didn’t move off the bed. “Better?” Luther didn’t reply. “God Luther, is this really what’s happened to us? You know you can tell me anything, right? Like when we were kids- like, really little. I’m not suddenly going to hate you any more than I already do just because you tell me something I don’t like.”

Luther wished he had never said anything. He wished that he’d forced Diego out of his room and told him to fuck off, wished that he never answered Diego’s questions when he pressured him, wished he’d never let his guard down in the first place, and he really wished he didn’t feel the urge to answer Diego’s concerns. “I hate what he did to me,” he said eventually. “I know that it was his only option and that he wanted to save me, but I wish he would have just let me die.”

He glanced to the side, and Luther caught Diego making a face. “What in the fuck are you on about?”

“It hurts, you know. Where the seams are,” Luther took one hand away from where he was clutching the sheet protectively against his torso to rub it over where the monkey torso met his human neck. “And sometimes it just aches. Like that thing, amputees have- phantom limb syndrome? You know? I still feel like I’ve got my old body, but every time I look at it, it’s just... foreign. It’s not me. It’s never been me. I miss my scars and my freckles and my skin. I miss it all. Because even though they were painful when it happened, I always thought they were going to be on my body forever, and now they're just... gone. Non-existent. Like it never happened.”

The expression on Diego’s face was painful so Luther tried not to look at him. “You’ve felt like that all this time and you’ve never said anything? To any of us?”

“What could I say?” Luther shrugged. “Who could I tell? I was on the moon for four pointless years and before that I hadn’t seen the rest of you for about 10 years. You expected me to go hunt out Klaus on the street and tell him about how much I hate the new monkey body dad put me in?”

“So you just... hurt? All the time?” Diego looked at a loss for words.

“It’s more like an ache, deep in my bones. Something like part of me trying to run away, or separate,” Luther tried to explain, but it was harder than he thought it would be. Inward thoughts were one thing- trying to describe it to his brother was another. “It just hurts, all the time. And you know I don’t mean to complain, because there’s really nothing to complain about, but if I’d had a choice, if dad had asked me what I wanted before acting, I would never have agreed to this.”

Diego didn’t say anything. He didn’t know _what_ to say. They just sat there in silence, Luther holding the thin white bed sheet up against his body for no reason other than to maintain some level of privacy while he stared into nothingness, and Diego sneaking glances at the thick brown fur that coated his body like a heavy rug from his father’s study, the sheet hiding very little. He didn’t know what to say. Their family had never really been the heart-to-heart, touchy-feely thought at the best of times, but this... this was something else.

But Luther didn’t seem to notice Diego’s moment of silence, “Sometimes I just look in the mirror and can’t remember what I used to look like. If it weren’t for all the portraits in the house or the news articles that were made of us that I’ve found all over the internet, I wouldn’t believe that I used to look any different. That I wasn’t always this... thing.” It sounded like Luther wanted to use a word much stronger than ‘thing’ but chose differently at the last moment. “I can’t fit into my clothes, I can’t go out in public, I can’t do anything without being reminded that I’m a monster.”

Licking his lips, Diego tried to find something to say but was afraid that he’d come up short. “But, I mean, we’re all monsters,” he tried. “We all are. You can’t tell me that Five isn’t a monster, or Allison, or Klaus. Ben was the very definition of a monster. You just... well, you look a little bit more like a monster than the rest of us, that’s all.”

It didn’t work. That was the wrong thing to say. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a monster,” Luther said quietly, and Diego wanted to slam his head into the closets wall until the plaster cracked. “You really don’t. The only woman I’ve ever been with was someone I met at a rave club, and even then, she only came home with me because she was a... what are those things called? Furry?”

“Oh my god,” Diego probably shouldn’t be laughing, but he just couldn’t help himself. “She thought you were a _furry_?”

“Yeah,” Luther grumbled. “I didn’t even know what that meant until Klaus told me.”

“You told _Klaus_?”

“He was there when it happened,” Luther tried desperately to explain, “He followed me to the bar and tried to drag me home but I was too busy dancing with this woman. I didn’t go home with him, but I saw he woke me up the next morning with a fucking bell and saw her in the bed, and then he told me. I thought I was going to die from embarrassment.”

Diego tried to stifle his laughter by biting his lips. “How could you not know what a furry is?”

“Oh, I don’t know Diego, I was on the god damn moon for four years,” Luther mocked. “Things change since then.”

But Diego was too busy laughing, and he slew an arm over Luther’s shoulder, not noticing the way he tensed at the contact. “Oh man, I wish that I’d been there. I would have recorded it all for prosperity.”

He waited for an annoyed reply, but none came, because Luther was too busy being uncomfortable to reply to that. “Can you get off of me?”

“No,” Diego said simply, and Luther made a startled noise at the back of his throat. “Because you need to start getting used to people touching you. I expect to see you walking around shirtless by the end of the year.”

“I can guarantee you that,” Luther said. “Is never going to happen.”

“Yes it will,” Diego insisted easily. “I’ll cut up all your shirts if you have to. If Klaus can walk around here wearing nothing but Allison’s mini-skirts and a bright pink boa, and that's on a good day, then you can walk around shirtless. Nobody will say anything, and if they do, I’ll knock them on their fucking asses.”

Luther was silent, but Diego waited patiently. “You sound so sure.”

Diego snorted. “Because I _am_ sure. I know that I was a piece of shit when we all came back for dads funeral-”

“You’re a piece of shit all the time,” Luther interrupted.

“-and I know I made some comments that I probably shouldn’t have, but I only thought that you’d gotten huge while jumping around on the moon, I had no idea that dad turned you into an ape,” Diego continued as if Luther hadn’t spoken. “And I’m sorry if I hurt you for any of that. But I’m not going to let the others pick on you now that we all know. Not even Klaus. But don’t think of a fucking second that I’m going to stop making monkey jokes,” he added, and Luther couldn’t help but laugh. Of course he wouldn’t. Luther wouldn’t ever expect anything else.

They just sat there in silence for a few moments, with Diego getting used to the feeling of course hair under his arm and Luther trying to just relax and familiarise himself with the weight of Diego’s arm slung over his shoulder- it had been so long since he’d been touched with any kindness, and it had been any longer since Diego touched him without any pain or malice attached- and tried to just accept the fact that Diego wasn’t going to leave him be no matter how much he asked him to.

It was strange- never in a million years would Luther have expected that Diego would be the sibling to find him at his lowest moment, talk him through his darkest thoughts, and stand beside him at his most painful point. _Diego_, of all people. Luther had never really gotten along with Diego. They were too similar, too stubborn and hard-headed and tough-guy to be friends. They loved each other, of _course_, they did, they always had and always will, but they had never actually gotten along. It was always like two warring bulls fighting for territory.

But Luther had always loved his siblings, each and every one of them, despite how complicated and frustrating they were. He wished they knew that more. He wished he’d been there for them. He wished...

“I wish I had known what he’d done to you all,” he voiced his final thought out loud, and he felt Diego stiffen at the sudden break of silence. “Dad. What he did to Klaus, and Vanya, and Ben. The rest of you, too, but you turned out a bit better than the others. Maybe if I had known, I’d have been able to get us all out of there or sorted him out sooner, and we’d all be much closer. I wished I’d been there for you all. I wished I’d been a better brother.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Diego replied, and that was the end of that.

There was a loud series of banging outside, a high-pitched squeal, before Luther’s bedroom door was being flung open and Klaus was rushing in, red-faced and panting hard, and he leant against the door. He caught sight of Diego and Luther, sitting very close together on Luther’s tiny bed that was missing the sheets for some reason, and paused. “Oh, hello there.”

“God, I’m shirtless for the first time in years, and suddenly everyone wants to use my bedroom as a designated hangout spot?” Luther complained, throwing his arms in the air. “What do you want, Klaus?”

“Oh, nothing,” the way Klaus looked through the small crack he had opened in the door, it seemed more than just ‘nothing.’ “I put glue in Five’s coffee and now I’m just trying to hide from him, but he can’t blame me, because it was actually Ben’s idea, honest.”

“You put glue,” Diego said slowly as if trying to make sense of it. “In Five’s coffee.”

“That’s exactly what I said, yes, but it was Ben’s idea,” Klaus said as he slowly backed away from the door.

“Somehow, I don’t believe that,” Luther said. “Get out.”

But Klaus was already far from the door and had turned to Luther and Diego with hungry eyes and rubbed his hands together. “I like your new look, big man. A sort of Tarzan look if Tarzan didn’t shower ever and grew enough chest-hair to harvest it and turn it into a rug for the fireplace, but I dig it.”

“Klaus,” Diego chided, but Klaus just waved him off.

“Don’t get your jimmies in a bunch, I couldn’t care less if Luther was a monkey or a bear or a tiger or a wildebeest or anything,” Klaus backed further away from the door when he heard Five’s voice got closer. “It’s new, that’s all. Some people will find that sexy, Luther. We just need to get you a furry helmet and you’ll get all the girls.”

Luther made a face. “_Yuck_.”

“So, what were you talking about?” Klaus continued. “Is there room for a third in that hunk sandwich you’ve got going on there?”

“You’re deranged, Klaus,” Diego rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you got Ben to keep you company?”

“Usually, yeah, but he’s trying to stop Five from killing me,” Klaus shrugged. “And I’m bored. So here I am.”

Diego just stared at him, dumbfounded. “I can’t believe you can seriously be so fucking stupid.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Luther tried to stand to shove Klaus out of his room, but Diego kept him down, pressing him back against the bed with the arm resting heavily across his shoulders. “Get the hell out of my room Klaus.”

“But-”

“No buts. You got yourself into this mess and now you can get yourself out of it,” Luther said definitively. “Now, get out before I _throw_ you out.”

Grumbling, Klaus opened the door, looked both ways down the hallway as if looking for oncoming cars on a road, and bolted out, screaming all the while, which probably didn’t help him if he was trying to be sneaky and hide from Five.

When they were alone again, Diego turned back to Luther with a smile on his face and slowly pulled his arm back. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” Luther said, surprisingly. “Uh, thanks. I think I really needed that.”

“No worries,” Diego said as he abruptly stood. “Well, I’ll leave you be. I’d better go and deal with this nonsense downstairs. Mum’s cooking dinner soon- make sure you join us.” He paused, half in and half out of the room, and turned back to Luther with a serious look that bigger man couldn’t identify. “With or without a shirt, whatever makes you comfortable. Or, as Klaus would say ‘whatever floats your boat’.”

The door closed again for one last time and Luther was finally left in solitude and silence, and somehow, he found himself not feeling quite as bad as before, and thought that maybe, it was alright to be a monster, if only for a little while. Maybe he would ditch the shirt for dinner. It was a refreshing thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that bit with Klaus at the end seemed a bit weird and out of place, but I felt like this fic needed something to break the tension, and what better way to inject some joy into a serious conversation than with Klaus? Also, I can totally see Klaus watching Five complain about shitty coffee, wait until he finally had the perfect cup of coffee and close his eyes as the steam rolled across his cheeks, and then reach over to squirt a bottle of Elmer's glue into his mug. I mean, come on, that's Klaus all the way.


End file.
